Margaret Plank

Margaret is senior counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Board, where she provides legal counsel on a wide range of statutes of general applicability to the federal government as well as interpretation of the enabling legislation for the CFPB. Previously, she was an attorney in the General Counsel’s Office at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, where she had primary responsibility for all labor and employment matters and provided counsel on appropriations, procurement, and ethics. Prior to that, she spent 10 years litigating on behalf of the United States as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice, where she represented executive branch agencies in U.S. district courts and U.S. courts of appeal. She holds a BA in literature from Yale University and a JD from Columbia Law School. A lifelong Quaker, Margaret is a member of Bethesda Friends Meeting, where she has taught First Day School to young Friends of all ages. She has also served on and clerked many meeting committees. She served as president of the board of Just Us Kids Child Development Center, the child care center sponsored by the Department of Justice; as president of the PTA at Woodlin Elementary School in Silver Spring; as vice president of the PTSA at Eastern Middle School in Silver Spring; as Einstein Cluster representative to the Montgomery County Council of PTAs; and as an appointed member of the Montgomery County Commission on Child Care. She was an active member of the Sidwell Friends Parents Association Quaker Life Committee, serving two years as all-school co-clerk. Margaret is married to Dave Souders, a partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm Weiner Brodsky Kider. They have three children: Peter Souders ’08, Kristina Souders ’11, and Timothy Souders ’14.